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Did you purchase a Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 series drive since last August? If so, you may be harboring a virus. A batch of the aforementioned drives shipped out of China infected with Virus.Win32.AugoRun.ah, which looks for passwords to several online games. It can also disable anti-virus software, leaving you vulnerable to other malware. Infected customers are asked to update their AV software, or download a free 60-day trial of Kaspersky offered to Seagate customers.
After five years, Microsoft can boast a membership of eight million for their XBox Live service. To celebrate, all XBox Live users are eligible to download Carcassone for free up until 11:50PM PDT on November 16 (that's tomorrow!). Active members who signed up in 2002 will also receive 500 Microsoft Points.
Gearlog reports that Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions have announced a new Blu-ray drive priced at $199. That's great news for HTPC enthusiasts, but not Aunt Tilly, who only uses her PC for light browsing and email. The PLDS DH_4O1S will be an internal PC drive, and not a set top box for your living room. The new drive will ship with Cyberlink's PowerDVD software.
What should come as a surprise to no one, a California man filed suit against Comcast Tuesday over their BitTorrent blocking tactics. Comcast drew considerable ire when it was revealed they were sending reset packets to throttle BT traffic, spurring outcries from the community, and a satirical spoof by our very own Will Smith. Legal beagles armed with a PDF reader can view the suit online.
Oops - that title should have read, Instant Messaging Used to Avoid Awkward Moments. In a new AOL poll (science just went out the window), it was reported that 43 percent of teens use instant messaging for things they wouldn't say in person, like asking someone out on a date, or breaking up with a significant other. On a completely unrelated note, Dave Murphy IMed me the other day claiming his cat could beat up my cat, to which I replied (via IM) I will no longer send him lolcat pics. It was like, totally crazy.
Id Software, the creators behind Doom, today announced a new division called id Mobile. The new venture plans to create mobile versions of Quake, Wolfenstein, and a sequel to Doom RPG. Co-founder John Carmack sees big potential on today's cell phones. The first Doom RPG released two years ago sold more than 1 million copies, giving him reason to believe the time might be ripe.
Comments are closed on this article
Nastyman
November 16, 2007 at 8:01pm
From now on I will just run FIXMBR from the command prompt using the XP disk before formatting a new drive.
Here is what it does:
http://tinyurl.com/ot3wc
Nasty
Marcus_Soperus
November 16, 2007 at 6:27pm
External hard disks are plug and play - they're preformatted using the FAT32 file system, so they're ready to work as soon as you plug them in. Unfortunately, that also means that an infected drive can infect you right away.
Every drive vendor needs to make sure that each and every external hard disk gets a full format and a fresh master boot record right before it's packaged. It's pretty disgusting that a product marketed to help you protect your data can compromise it.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Talcum X
November 16, 2007 at 6:08am
It has always been the case to format a new HD as it was useless any other way. Quick formating was a thing reserved for your floppies. But as OS's aged, the quick format was extended to the HD (it made sense as the HD sizes are a lot larger than they were back in the not-so-distant past. I think most people have come accustomed to using the quick format, whether it be Fat32 or NTFS, as it just takes so little time...and that's what the Chinese are counting on. And now that I said all that, I'm not entirely sure if the quick or normal format has any different way of handling the MBR.
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Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
nsvander
November 15, 2007 at 5:45pm
Does anyone format their drives before use? This is a practice that I got used to doing years ago. Before I ever use a new drive the first thing I do is completely format it.
Nastyman
November 15, 2007 at 5:40pm
Ok, where was the virus? On the boot sector of the drive because the drives aren't formatted.
Nasty
